A method for repelling insect pests has been studied so far. Especially, since termites damage to wooden houses so much, a termite repellant or a termite repelling method has been intensely studied or developed in the world. The method for repelling termites includes a method for killing termites wherein a solvent type insecticide of organic phosphorus agent, carbamate agent, pyrethroid agent and the like is injected into an approach point of termites; and a method for killing termites wherein methyl bromide or the like is smoked (see Non-patent Literature 1, for example).
Instead of chemical spraying method, an insecticide having slow releasing properties is contained in food for termites and fed to termites, which is called “bait method” (see Non-patent Literature 2, for example).
In the method for repelling termites in the prior art, much amount of chemical substances is externally applied to woods which have damaged by termites, but the method would damage to human health, for example sick house syndrome, or to environmental pollution. In addition, such external application is difficult to totally kill the termites and a portion of the colony of termite would reproduce a colony and damages to the portions which have not been applied by chemicals. In the above methods, most serious problem is that the above mentioned repelling method necessitates much amount of labor to effectively kill termites. In addition, most often applied method for repelling termites is a smoking of methyl bromide which is, however, questioned as a material causing depletion of ozone layer and is recently tried to inhibit the use methyl bromide.
Ants similar to termites which form social living are generally repelled by feeding favorite foods containing chemical substance toxic to ants and transporting the foods by the ants to their nest to kill all colonies of ants. However, since termites feed woods which termites are nested therein, it is very difficult to externally feed favorite food containing insecticide to termites and therefore the bait method as mentioned above is not effective to termites. Especially, it is very difficult to totally kill all nests of termites belonging to Reticulitermes speratus by the bait method (see Non-patent Literature 2).
As a method in which active component is effectively fed by insect pests in comparison with the bait method, an insect pest repellant method using dummy egg transportation has been developed using an egg-transporting instinct of one of basic social behavior of insect pests (see Patent Literature 1). The insect pests of Patent Literature 1 can be termites. However, the method of Patent Literature 1 employs crude extracted component extracted from eggs of termites, which makes it possible to transport dummy eggs by the termites, but this method does not employ egg recognizing pheromone of the termites. This method would not work so much in view of cost, unless egg recognizing pheromone of termites is identified and cheaply produced in large scale.
The present inventors already proposed in Patent Literature 2 dummy eggs for repelling termites comprising an egg recognizing pheromone and insect pests repellant of termites, because the egg recognizing pheromone of termites was identified as lysozyme, its salt, its biological fragment or peptide related to lysozyme. The dummy eggs were transported by termites to show excellent termite repellant effect. The present inventors are to enhance the properties of the dummy eggs to kill termites.